When I was a kid, my father was a contractor, so he was often out and about in his truck. When he saw something good, perhaps put out for free, or just trashed, he'd pick it up. I had at least 3 or 4 rusty batons with dry and cracked end pieces. But as grubby as these things often were, I actually enjoyed having been thought of, and usually I didn't really care that it was rusty and crusty. I too have the trash pickin' gene: when I lived in Cambridge MA I got a lot of my furniture on Tuesday evenings. Instead of having large item pick ups, you could just put out anything. I remember one of my roommates needed a bike, so she went hunting around on trash day and found one that was quite serviceable.
Fast forward 25 years or so, and my mother asks me "Do you know what this is? It looks like a backpack, but it seems to be missing a piece. Your father found it out in front of the house, and no one claimed it, so we brought it in." I couldn't believe my luck! I was an Ergo Carrier ! I checked to make sure they'd really given someone sufficient time to reclaim it, and once satisfied, I took possession of the ergo carrier and modeled how it worked. It seemed fitting that my father's first baby gift to me was found on the street.
Today I was driving home and I saw a semi-disassembled crib in a neighbors driveway. Before I even brought it up with my husband I internally debated whether or not I could bear to have a disassembled crib in the garage. It felt like a choice between withdrawal and disconnection and hope, and I realized that I needed to give myself a symbol of hopefulness for the upcoming IVF. Heck, I felt affronted by our Highlander because it was supposed to be a baby car--in the right state of mind I can be a raving lunatic no matter what the stimuli--at least a crib is directly related! So I drug it home, disassembled it further, and tomorrow were going to stash it under a sheet. Of course I'll know it's there, but I'm hoping that the mere knowledge of it won't feel humiliating or like too much of an investment of hope. And if it does, I can give it away. But it feels good to have been hopeful enough to make this step.
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